On Monday, April 4th, 2024, the Vatican Press Office released the document called Declaration of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith ‘Dignitas Infinita’ on Human Dignity, or Dignitas Infinita for short.[1] This document’s goal was to explain the Roman Catholic doctrine of the inherent dignity that exists within each human being, and to address issues that the Church[2] sees as attacking or doing harm to this inherent infinite dignity. The occasion for its drafting, as stated by the Bishop of Rome, was to “explicitly [urge] that more attention be given to the grave violations of human dignity in our time.”[3] Such a serious and urgent tone was imbued into this document, and for its purposes, is quite explicit in its reasoning of what human dignity is and how it ought to be treated. However, there is in this document several missteps, especially in how it approaches some controversial topics, most visibly its reckoning with what it calls “gender theory.” [4] This is a response to these statements on gender and dignity, from the perspective of a transgender woman. It is my purpose to investigate what the Papal Office describes as infinite dignity, and to argue why I believe Francis has not adequately addressed or understood the issue of gender, especially as it regards transgender people.
It is important that I issue my position plainly. I am not a Roman Catholic, but rather, an Episcopalian, and so there is less at stake in me speaking against Roman Catholic doctrine as such. The Pope is the most high-profile and visible voice for theological and doctrinal statements in the Christian world and is the primary leader in the largest Christian denomination in the world. What he says about faith matters to millions of people worldwide, Christian or non-Christian. When non-Christians imagine a Christian leader, they refer to the Pope. Thus, his doctrinal statements deserve study and scrutiny as the de facto position of the Church in the public eye. I have studied under both conservative and progressive Catholic teachers, and I regularly have fellowship with Roman Catholics. Thus, it is with this position in mind I come to the document of Dignitas Infinita, and the problem it poses to me, a transgender Christian.
What is Meant by Dignity
To claim that humans bear an inherent dignity grounded in our beings is, ostensibly, not a controversial statement. This is a framework that has existed in some form for the better part of the century, and Dignitas Infinita names the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 as a primary source for this assertion. That declaration, along with this doctrinal document, claim that “all human beings—created by God and redeemed by Christ—must be recognized and treated with respect and love due to their inalienable dignity.”[5] This recognition also asserts that being human comes with rights and freedoms, especially when it concerns “originality, dignity, the intangibility and richness of the person’s fundamental rights, sacredness, capacity for education, aspiration to a complete development, and immortality.”[6] Making this a wide swathe of inherent rights and freedoms is a good thing, and I would say that it forms the basis of a generous and benevolent theological anthropology. To assert as such is a reasonable stance to take for the Church, but it also lays the groundwork for when the pope fumbles later in the document.
So, what does the Church mean when it talks about dignity? Many things could be meant, and dignity is a somewhat inherently unclear word in a theological context. Thus, the Pope posits a fourfold typology for approaching the concept of dignity: ontological dignity, moral dignity, social dignity, and existential dignity.[7] As laid out, ontological refers to that dignity which one is created with and belongs to humans simply by virtue of being created by a loving God. Moral dignity refers to how human beings exercise their freedom, and act on their internal conscience. Social dignity refers to the “quality of a person’s living conditions,” and most apparently addresses the problem of poverty and human exploitation within a fallen world.[8] Finally, there is existential dignity, which is perhaps the least well defined, but seems to refer to a life lived with “peace, joy, and hope.”[9] Given this set of beliefs about human dignity, it is curious in which they assert this belief in practice later in the document. Existential dignity seems to be the most flexible in application, as it can refer to anyone who lives a full life, yet it is absent of peace, joy, or hope, all the way to people who live with serious illness, domestic abuse, and addiction problems. I believe this fourth category of existential dignity is truly where the waters get muddied, for who is to decide who lives a life of existential dignity? Would the Church bear to stand in the place of Jesus, who had ultimate compassion for all people, especially those whom religious officials might deem without dignity? Though it is true one can begin to make finer judgments about character and dessert based on logical criteria or biblical formulations of law, Jesus would remind us that He is the living law, the Logos, incarnate in human flesh and residing at the side of the Father, and only to him judgment is reserved.
Finally, there needs to be an understanding of whom the Church deems “human.” The document clarifies that a human is an “individual substance of a rational nature,” and this definition encompasses all humans from the unborn, the unconscious, and all the way to the aged and elderly.[10] It is not my place to argue against this definition of a person, and I am more than willing to entertain this as a proper application of the term “person.” Though this is not the purpose of my work here, it is notable that the Church seeks to speak for those who cannot, and would speak on their behalf unbidden and perhaps unwanted. Likewise, there are far more people alive that might have differences of opinion about the nature of life, consciousness, and being as it relates to the unborn in particular, but suffice it to say, it is my position that I would defer to those who can speak about most acutely to this point to articulate it further as the true experts with experience: people who can bear children. Their opinion is of far greater weight than mine, and thus I would defer to them in this regard. My focus must remain on my own experience and expertise, which would be from a transgender person’s perspective. Thus, I shall focus on that issue.
Violation and “Gender”
Much of Dignitas Infinita is reserved for the theological exploration of the concept of human dignity, and an argument for such from the biblical and theological position of the Roman Catholic Church’s historical perspective. Most of this is unproblematic; defending the concept of human dignity has an immense basis in theological anthropology, and honestly, does not require much explication. Their position can be summarized like this: All people deserve certain rights and freedoms, which are afforded to us based on being made by God. This is supported by the biblical texts as well as the historic tradition of the Church. That they take great pains to illustrate this support is the due diligence of their theological tradition, and that is important to recognize.
It is important to recognize how the Church constructs its conception of human dignity, and why it feels the need to speak about dignity in this way. Repeatedly, the Church asserts that dignity is an intrinsic quality, one that cannot be lost. [11]Likewise, the Church has an unconditional respect for human dignity, one that is not “contingent upon a judgment about the person’s ability to understand and act freely.”[12] So emphatic is this insistence upon the inalienability and unconditional quality of dignity, that they state the “only prerequisite for speaking the dignity inherent in the person is their membership in the human species.”[13] Likewise, the Church’s defense of this concept is “based on the constitutive demands of human nature, which do not depend on individual arbitrariness or social recognition.”[14] The relationality of the human person also lends itself to a perspective that de-centers the individual and recenters the ethical scope to the entire community of human beings.[15] Yet, even in recognizing the “clear progress” in the understanding of freedom and dignity, the Church warns of “shadows and risks of regression,” which lends itself to its admonitions regarding the topic of gender, among many other concerns it has in its gaze.[16]
Before I begin into the gender conversation, however, there is one other passage of note worth considering. When the Church lists the violations against human dignity, it cites things like “murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia, and willful suicide,” as well as “mutilation, physical and mental torture” and “undue psychological pressures” among the offenses.[17] I mention this, especially “mental torture” and “undue psychological pressures,” because it does indeed relate to issues of transgender health, well-being, and dignity. To be sure, these things might be understood differently by Pope Francis and the bishops who issued this statement, but I am compelled to highlight them nonetheless.
To bring the matter into stark relief, the Church sates that there are “definite critical issues present in gender theory.”[18] How do they define gender theory, one may ask? They take great pains to explain in explicit detail what they mean by “dignity,” “person,” and so forth—yet when it comes to this point, the Church only speaks in vague assumptions and ill-defined terms. The document quotes Pope Francis in statements he has made claiming that “it cancels differences in its claim to make everyone equal,” casts aspersions as to the “scientific coherence” of gender theory among “experts,” and again asserts that it seeks to “deny the greatest possible difference that exists between living beings: sexual difference.”[19] There are no sources to back up these claims; they cite no studies, they quote no research papers, there is nothing at all in the section on gender theory to definitively state what it is precisely meant by the phrase “gender theory” at all. The Church continues, in asserting that gender theory seeks to eliminate “the anthropological basis of the family,” and even goes as far as to say that “masculine and feminine” cannot be separated from “God’s work of creation.” Naturally, because of these strong positions on “gender theory,” the Church dismisses and condemns the practice of “sex change,” also known as Sexual Reassignment Surgery (SRS)[20], except in cases of persons with “genital abnormalities that are already evident at birth or that develop later,” in which case the church is in favor of the procedure.[21] Thus, the Church has its say on the matter of “gender theory,” and does not examine it further.
To say that this entire portion of the declaration is misguided and ill-informed is an understatement of catastrophic scale. Nowhere in this document are any doctors, medical researchers, psychologists, psychiatrists, medical practitioners, and professionals, let alone any trans or intersex people, referenced or quoted. The only sources that have informed the drafting of this document are sources from within the Church itself, and were this solely a theological document, that might be excused, but to state with theological certainty about anything with clarity regarding an issue that originates from a non-Magisterial source and has copious amounts of data and theorizing on public and academic record, is baffling.
First, the words “gender theory” actually do mean something, though a pithy definition might be a bit beyond the complexity of the topic itself. Most likely, what the Church means by this phrase is the loosely defined field of academic study that engages with and studies the lives and voices of transgender and gender-diverse people, as well as critiques of social norms relating to gender and sexuality.[22] This, of course, is but one definition they could possibly mean, but it is difficult to be sure. Is the Church referring to the idea that gender and sex might be related but separate concepts, one referring to biology and the other referring to the expression of identity? Is the Church referring to the theorists that interrogate the role of gender and sex in society? Is the Church referring to the scientific study of gender-diverse individuals and the medical apparatus that enables people to better express their gender? I simply do not and cannot know. Likewise, I cannot know through which filters and sources the Church has received its impression and belief about gender theory, and thus cannot adequately critique the originating misunderstandings of the field.
Perhaps the Church might want to see what doctors and healthcare providers have to offer for the standards of care for transgender people—perhaps make a good faith effort in seeing what medical professionals who engage critically with the needs of trans people might have to say?[23] I understand that the full guidebook is quite lengthy, but verbosity has never stopped the Catholic Church before—I should know, I’ve read Aquinas. Heck, they have an entire chapter outlining the terminology, in which WPATH has helpfully defined transgender people as “people with gender identities or expressions that differ from the gender socially attributed to the sex assigned to them at birth.”[24] Ah, but perhaps I overplay my hand. You see, the Church would need to recognize people as being transgender for them to be able to define us as such, and it is apparent that, after a long document filled with equivocating definitions, the Church has no such interest in seeing transgender people as people.
For you see, if we are not people with the freedom to define for ourselves what dignity would look like for us, then the Church is free to define it for us, and we have no reason to disagree! If trans and gender-diverse people exist, then we would have an inherent and inalienable dignity, but if we do not, and are simply the victims of a nebulous and undefined “gender theory,” then we in fact, do not have this imputed dignity. We are instead the aggrieved victims of “gender theory,” fooled into a delusion that defies natural law, and thus, in need of spiritual correction. For as much as the Church makes a point of emphasizing that they oppose bigotry and discrimination, they fail to see how their words and actions in this regard enforce bigotry and discrimination, all because they do not wish to understand us as we are.
Queer Dignity
Truth be told, when I began writing this, I was tempted to submit it to a publication, but as I have gone on to the writing of the work, I decided that I would unbind my critique to a formal structure worthy of publication. It would take much longer, more editing, and less impact if I somehow got it published by an academic publisher. Additionally, I fear in doing so would make the writing of this essay less powerful, as I would be reining in my full breadth of emotion for academic respectability, and truly, respectability is something that I don’t have time or energy for in this world, especially when those who demand us behave respectably treat us like this.
The gall. The absolute hubris and cruelty of the Church is on full display here. This is not an academic essay worthy of the digital ink it was published upon. This is simply a pronouncement to the world just how little the Church understands or values us. They did not put the effort into researching, understanding, or even pretending to understand queer people, trans people, or intersex people. We are unreal, a category, a theory, one they refuse to even entertain.
The Church says that it is against “murder, genocide… and willful suicide” but they do not see the victims of transphobia each year on Trans Day of Remembrance as victims of their theology.[25] How could they? Especially if we don’t register as being worthy of dignity, but rather proponents of a nefarious “gender theory” that seeks to undo the natural order of the cosmos! They at the same time pity us as deluded fools, and victimize us with academic language that fails to show us dignity. It is not a dialogue, but a monologue, one delivered to the world as a proclamation of denunciation.
The Church does not understand that living as a transgender person, undergoing the wrong puberty in adolescence is torture. They do not understand that when we withstand abuse, hatred, and violence, the ones perpetrating the violence are using the words the Church gave them. They do not understand that despite it all, the intentional misunderstanding, the willful ignorance, the trauma and torture of existing in the world the Church built, all of it—ALL OF IT—requires a dignity that we have to wring out of every moment of queer joy we can muster. That dignity that should be inherent and inalienable is only something that we can give ourselves first, because the church seeks to rob us of that dignity that is owed us by virtue of us being bearers of the image of God. We are not violating God’s dignity—the Church is, in refusing to understand us as we are. All this also is undergirded by the hypocrisy of the church in response to intersex people, people with “genital abnormalities” as they see it. SRS is allowable in their case, because it would not constituted a “sex change,” but in many cases this is done without the consent of the intersex person, as it is often performed at birth.[26] This, naturally, is par for the course for the Church, as it does not seem to care about the consent or desires of pregnant people in the case of abortion either. They would rather speak on behalf of people who cannot speak for themselves, rather than listen to what people are telling them the entire time. It is intentional stonewalling at best, and cruel authoritarianism at worst. It certainly does not actually understand the dignity of the human person in practice, as much as it vociferously defends the concept in theory. Dignity is a concept that demands defense but is a reality they refuse to perceive when it looks differently than in their theories.
Conclusion
To quote the bard, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Though Hamlet was speaking of specters and phantasms, I use it here to admonish the institution that fails to register the dignity of queer people in favor of a theoretical dignity that denies our existence. Indeed, the church has instead erected a philosophical phantasm to distort trans and intersex existence as merely the product of a profane “gender theory,” despite all manner of scholarship to the contrary. Dignitas Infinita ought to have been a declaration that illustrated the finer points of dignity for all people, but instead regards those of us that might be in some way different from cisgender heteronormative society as but a daemonic product of a “gender theory” that bears no resemblance to any theory I could find in scholarship.
This is not a declaration that merits respect, because it is a declaration that does not give it. This is a document that exists in order to be cited against the Church’s perceived enemies, and not a document that in any way confers dignity to people who are begging, nay, demanding a shred of dignity and respect. It does not respect any beliefs or philosophies outside of its own. The Church does not comprehend us, and seeks to dismiss us. But we refuse to be dismissed. We refuse to go away. Trans people, gender non-conforming people, intersex people—all of us are here to stay. We have always existed. We will continue to exist, despite the efforts of the church to define us out of existence. The Church must reconcile the harm it does to us in order to be able to see us with the dignity it pretends to offer to us.
Transgender people have dignity, given to us by God. We are strange and beautiful and fashioned in the very image of God. Nothing the Church can say can ever take away the dignity we were given. We will continue to wrestle every inch of dignity we can out of this world.
To hell with the Church and its theology of disrespect.
We have dignity, and they can never take that away.
[1] Pope Francis, “Declaration of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith ‘Dignitas Infinita’ on Human Dignity” (Holy See Press Office, April 8, 2024), https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2024/04/08/240408c.html.
[2] Here, when capitalized, “Church” will refer to the institutional body that issued this statement, and not necessarily the church universal, a distinction that I believe needs to be made as I am not a Roman Catholic and the Church does not speak for all people who call themselves Christian.
[3] Francis, “Dignitas Infinita.” Pg. 2.
[4] Ibid. Pg. 15.
[5] Ibid. Pg. 3.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid. Pg. 4.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ibid. Pg. 6.
[12] Ibid. Pg. 8.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Ibid. Pg. 10.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Ibid. Pg. 15.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Or, alternatively, GRS, Gender Reassignment Surgery.
[21] Ibid. Pg. 16.
[22] TAM SANGER, “Beyond Gender and Sexuality Binaries in Sociological Theory: The Case for Transgender Inclusion,” in Transgender Identities (Routledge, 2010).
[23] E. Coleman et al., “Standards of Care for the Health of Transgender and Gender Diverse People, Version 8,” International Journal of Transgender Health 23, no. sup1 (August 19, 2022): S1–259, https://doi.org/10.1080/26895269.2022.2100644.
[24] Coleman et al. Pg. S11.
[25]“Transgender Day of Remembrance | GLAAD,” November 8, 2019, https://glaad.org/tdor/.
[26] Kyle Knight, “‘I Want to Be Like Nature Made Me,’” Human Rights Watch, July 25, 2017, https://www.hrw.org/report/2017/07/25/i-want-be-nature-made-me/medically-unnecessary-surgeries-intersex-children-us.
Incredible writing, Mae - thank you for the energy you put into this, I know it wasn’t easy.